London will celebrate stamps for Tommy Hunter and other country stars

Canada’s Country Gentleman will be honoured at a public celebration in London next week to mark his Canada Post stamp of approval.

Iconic country singer Tommy Hunter, of London, and fans are to gather on July 31 at 11 a.m. to mark a Canada Post domestic stamp with his image as part of a series along with other Canadian stars.

Hunter moved back to London after ending his touring career at what is now the Budweiser Gardens’ RBC Theatre on his 75th birthday, March 20, 2012.

More details on the public celebration at Canada Post’s 387 Wellington Rd. site are expected soon.

Also being honoured with stamps are Shania Twain, k.d. lang, Quebec’s Renee Martel and Hank Snow, the Nova Scotia star who was a big influence on the young Hunter.

“Our Canadian Country Artists series salutes five of this nation’s legendary country music stars,” Canada Post says on its website.

Born in London, Hunter began playing guitar when he was a boy of nine attending Ealing elementary school. He idolized such country music stars of the 1940s as U.S. legend Roy Acuff and Canada’s Snow.

By the mid-1950s, Hunter had moved to Toronto. He made his mark quickly. In 1956, he was a member of CBC-TV’s Country Hoedown. Nine years later, he had his own show, which the CBC cancelled in the early 1990s.

“The Tommy Hunter Show . . . ran for 27 years, making it the longest-running network country music show in the world,” Canada Post says on its website.

Hunter kept touring even as his stage talk reminded the CBC powers they had made a mistake. He later made other TV specials for the network.

The Hunter stamp was designed by Roy White of Subplot Design. Issue date for the Canadian Country Artists stamps is July 31.

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